Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers to Exit

Well I guess I was ahead of my time. In a posting on the previous blog I suggested it would be a good idea for President Obama to shake up his economic team a little. Rahm Emanuel will be running for mayor of Chicago and Larry Summers, another Clintonista, will be leaving. I don't know if this is pressure from the voters or what, but I think change of almost any kind has to be a good thing at this point to let the public know you are actually doing something. In the past few days key provisions of the Health Care plan have gone into effect. Among these are a maximum cap on medical payments and also the provision about having a pre existing condition. Many cases involve children with horrible conditions and the parents are so troubled because they can't get insurance for these children. My one fear is that putting a "safety net" in the system this way will jack up the insurance rates for everybody else. This is what the conservatives say will happen. Still others believe that is the President gets out front with a message of bold change, then perhaps it will sell to the voters and perhaps he can shake a few votes loose that would otherwise go to republican candidates. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Well, "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" is still the law of the land. People have suggested that since there was a decision of a judge that "Don't Ask; Don't 'Tell" was wrong that perhaps all the President needed to do now was to issue an executive decision. John Mc Cain I thought used to be for reform in the gay rights area, but now now or any time since he has re-made his image. This issue is such a hot potato now for the democrats and the republicans are trying to get as much mileage from it as they can. So they defeated a major defense appropiations bill and blamed the democrats. Actually the specific vote "failed" by a vote of 53 for and 46 against or whatever, which means the gay rights measure got a majority vote, but we know that doesn't count for anything in today's political reality. Personally I don't think they should abolish "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" until they have done an internal study that showed such a move would not cause disruption in military efficiency and unity. My understand was that the military was willing to go along with such a measure. Today's reality is that gays are perfectly capable for performing their duty just like any other officer. They are able to keep wrap on their sexual impulses. I know that Bill Press turned against Ross Perot because in late spring of 1992 Ross Perot came out against gays in the Defense Department. I felt this move on Bill Press' part was really odd because who would consider a gay free military a "deal breaker". But about June first of 1992 it seems "everybody" turned against Ross Perot at once, almost as if someone had cast an evil spell. But that was then and this is now, when gay people as a whole have become a whole more lot accepted in society.

Jimmy Carter was on Sixty Minutes last Sunday. You know, I did not vote for Jimmy Carter - either time he ran. I may have voted for him in the June 1980 primary when I was still a democrat. But my admiration for Jimmy Carter has grown over the years. Truely this is one of the most moral, principled men we have ever had as President. He didn't want to make any sneaky deals with Congress to pass a certain bill. Ted Kennedy was the guy who wasn't being a team player by openly opposing Carter. He would rather that Jimmy Carter accomplish nothing if he couldn't put all of his pet health care programs through. You'll have to remember that none of those hostages in Iran died but all 52 were safely returned. Thom Hartman goes further to say that the anniversary being election day was no coincidence. I don't know to what extent that Ronald Reagan rigged the whole release timing. I know there have been a lot of roomers, but according to Hartman the only one who knows for sure is William Casey, and he'd dead now.

We are going to do a color test right now, one two three four. Except for last Wednesday, the color on blogger hasn't worked this entire week or the other six days of last week. If it works today I will try and go back and colorize stuff in the previous blog. I have a cold this morning. So I kind of hand to cancel plans for a teeth cleaning. Judy says it's because I haven't been taking my silver. I've been hacking out my brains out. Coughing has been uncontrolable. I still haven't worked any more on that paper on John Lennon I was going to do for Dr. Levy. I would like to welcome new readers. The numbers look more favorible now. Maybe Google's counter just got "un-stuck" because we know that occurrs. We will be posting in this blog for the next couple of weeks or so and then we'll move on to "Marcus in Exile". By the time I get to a dark blog, I am very much hoping that the colorization control will be fixed.